Strategies for Growth: the Jobless Recovery

The US has a jobless rate of over 10% and it appears the rate will continue to grow; in contrast in Canada, we have likely seen the end of the recession and there are signs of positive economic growth. The contrast of economic growth and a growing jobless rate has many people calling the current environment a “Jobless Recovery”. I searched the term jobless recovery in wikipedia and found the following definition for the term:

What Does Jobless Recovery Mean?
“An economic recovery, following a recession, where the economy as a whole improves, but the unemployment rate remains high or continues to increase over a prolonged period of time. This effect may be a result of cautious businesses that add hours to existing employees in order to increase production capacity rather than hiring new workers.”

Strategies for Growth –
Market Segment – An identifiable group of individuals, families, firms, or organizations, sharing one or more characteristics or needs in an otherwise homogenous market. Market segments generally respond in a predictable manner to a marketing or promotion offer.

Industrial market segmentation is a scheme for categorizing industrial and business customers to guide strategic and tactical decision-making, especially in sales and marketing. While government agencies and industry associations use standardized segmentation schemes for statistical surveys, most businesses create their own segmentation scheme to meet their particular needs.

While similar to consumer market segmentation, segmenting industrial markets is different and more challenging because of greater complexity in buying processes, buying criteria, and the complexity of industrial products and services themselves. Further complications include the role of financing, contracting, and complementary products/services.

The goal for every industrial market segmentation scheme is to identify the most significant differences among current and potential customers that will influence their purchase decisions or buying behavior, while keeping the scheme as simple as possible (Occam’s Razor). This will allow the industrial marketer to differentiate their prices, programs, or solutions for maximum competitive advantage.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_market_segmentation